The first set of earnings from five public sector lenders have beaten the market expectations, especially on the bad assets front, during the September quarter.

Among the public sector banks, so far Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Union Bank, Allahabad Bank and Syndicate Bank have announced the earnings.

The star performer was Bank of India whose net profit soared over 105 per cent to Rs 622 crore in the quarter to September as against Rs 302 crore a year ago. Spurt in profit after tax was on account of higher net interest income and other incomes.

Net interest income improved to Rs 2,527 crore, registering a growth of 15.07 per cent as against Rs 2,196 crore in year-ago period.

The two-fold jump in the net profit led to the bank's shares to rise over 22 per cent to close at Rs 211.95 on October 31 on the NSE.

The net interest income during the quarter rose to Rs 1,309 crore as against Rs 1,174 crore.

Syndicate Bank also reported a marginal 1.4 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 470.12 crore, from Rs 463.37 crore year ago.

However, country's second largest lender Bank of Baroda reported 10.2 per cent decline in net profit at Rs 1,168.1 crore, down from Rs 1,301.39 crore a year ago, on higher provisioning towards employees cost and treasury losses. Even this was above the market view and the stock closed 4.5 per cent higher on the BSE on Friday at Rs 671.65, after jumping more than 7 per cent intra-day, said analysts.

Union Bank of India too saw its net plunging 62.45 per cent at Rs 208.12 crore on account of higher provisions but this was much above street estimate. The market lapped up UBI counter and closed 9 per cent higher at Rs 134.40 on the BSE.

However, the asset quality fared in a mixed manner. While Bank of India's loan portfolio quality improved with gross non-performing assets declining to 2.93 per cent from 3.42 per cent, for BoB it nearly doubled to 3.15 per cent from 1.98 per cent.

For Union Bank too, gross NPAs marginally improved to 3.64 per cent from 3.66 per cent, while net NPAs rose tepidly to 2.15 per cent from 2.06